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As Andrei Konchalovsky furiously drank his brandy, he uttered, “I want to know what the board members have to say about my film.” “I can give you a bottle of brandy if you eavesdrop after the screening and let me know what their objections are.” “Why not?” replied the projectionist and went to the director’s office the next day to a report. “But this was nothing,” the projectionist added, “You should have heard what they said about the movies during the Stalin days.” “In Stalin’s days?” Inquired Konchalovsky. “Yes, I was his projectionist,” the projectionist replied. As Konchalovsky got more curious, he opened the brandy bottle and sat in the Moscow projection booth. “Tell me more,” he said.
‘We Could Make A Whole Book’ Is What He Told Him. The Threading Machine Guy Divulged, ‘Well I Can Inform You Just How Long I Might Spend In The Gulag.’ ‘I Am Not Sure How Much I Would Be Paid,’ ‘We Pulled Give It For Sale To The Americans. The Revenue Would Stand At $100K.’ is How The Converstaion Went. This conversation ran through leading Soviet filmmaker Konchalovsky’s mind on multiple occasions. In 1979, he fled the capital city of Moscow with a lot of renovation, only to come to Los Angeles which was a massive step down. For the next three years, he transitioned into an utterly non existent persona. Eventually, he was given the opportunity to direct a film that cost $50,000 and took only half an hour to shoot. However, he did have a producer monitoring him to make sure he actually knew what he was doing.
Konchalovsky did and in the last decade he has also produced American movies such as “Maria’s Lovers,” “Runaway Train,” “Homer and Eddie,” “Shy People,” and currently, “The Inner Circle,” which is the life story of Stalin’s projectionist. (“The Inner Circle” is now showing in Chicago at McClurg Court.) “I made this film to explain Russia to the Americans,” he said discussing the captivating story of his film while simultaneously enjoying a big bowl of vegetable soup. “Americans believe Russians are such incredible people who have had a horrible economic system, and all they need is freedom and they will be happy. But it is not so simple. Russians have never been free, there is no precedent for it in our history. Only as recently as 1861 did we free our serfs. Most Russians were slaves, not along racial lines, but other Russians enslaved them.”
She inquires who he is infatuated with more- is it her or should he refer to her as Comrade Stalin? Without flinching, he states that it’s Comrade Stalin.
Having prepared “The Inner Circle” for the Americans, Konchalovsky now claims that it has sadly been botched by its distributor Columbia Pictures and is set to drown without many people knowing of it.
“He said it is going to do well in Europe. It is going to the Berlin Film Festival. It is timely, and they are eagerly waiting for it. But I did not make it for Europe. I made it for America. It was financed by an Italian, and got picked up by Columbia for 10 million or 11 million dollars – cheap, in Hollywood terms. Frank Price was the company president and he liked it. Now Price is gone and the company is stuffing it. They opened it in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas Day – the worst opening date. This is not the kind of film that should go up against the big holiday releases. They spent almost no money advertising it. People don’t know it exists.” He is so bitter, he said, that next time around he will instead, try to find a good distribution deal first and then make the film.
Konchalovsky has had issues with distribution in the past. “Shy People,” where Jill Clayburgh plays a New York journalist who goes to meet her cousin (Barbara Hershey) in the bayous of Louisiana, was at once a critical success and a hit at the Cannes Film Festival, yet received an awful distribution from Cannon Films during their regular financial Corresponding death struggles.
He views it with a shrug. “That film was really about an American who went to see Siberia,” he commented. “The bayou, that was Siberia. The mother with her children under strict control and forbidding them to love, that was Russia. The family still adored the mother’s much older husband who many believed was dead, but some say were still out there in the bayou. His name was Joe.” Konchalovsky smiled.
“Russians are truly peculiar,” he said. ”We are renowned poets, musicians, romantics, visionaries, dancers, and writers, yet we do not do very well at democracy. It would not surprise me if a new dictator appears, a soldier wearing dark sunglasses and gold braids on his shoulders, who tells the Russians to follow him, and he will take care of them. And perhaps they may do so, with some relief.” It required boldness on his part, I assume, to step out of his cozy niche in the upper eschalons of the Soviet film industry into the uncharted realities of Hollywood.
When asked about Russians and their appreciation of movies, one film critic said, “No, because I was aware of who I was and I presumed that all of you over here did too. However, when I found out differently, they found out that I was from Russia. They said they loved Russian films but, guess which film did they mention? ‘Dr. Zhivago.’ ” One type of American film that greatly discourages him is those which does not elicit any rational thinking from the consumers. “A good film does not tell you what is good or evil instead makes you decide. A bad film tells you at the beginning which is which, and then good defeats evil.” He went on to list a few notable American directors saying, “They may have been devoured by Hollywood, but they have not been incorporated.” Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen were some of the names he mentioned.
“The opening scene with De Niro is one of the best shots I’ve seen in any movie, and I only got to appreciate it after the fact. In the movie ‘Raging Bull,’ I understood the character’s motivations as he is the only enemy he has to contend with.” Scorsese once described that shot as the master image of his work. How about you? Is there an image that encapsulates your work? “Absolutely there is,” said Konchalovsky bashfully, “In my movie ‘Runaway Train,’ there is a final shot of Jon Voight with his arms wide open at the train’s front, thunderously roaring towards the uncharted future, symbolic of everything the audience anticipates his character to do next.”
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